Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis eBook

“My!” murmured Dan enthusiastically.
“Won’t I quiver with glee the first time
I see you being called for twelve-inch freshness!”

Yet, despite their wordy encounters, the two remained,
as always, the best and most loyal of friends.

For an hour and a half the two youngsters roamed about
Annapolis, taking many interested looks at quaint
old buildings that had stood since long before the
Revolutionary War.

At last they turned back to the hotel, for, as Dalzell
suggested, they needed a long night’s sleep
as a good preparation for going before the Naval surgeons
on the next day.

Five minutes after they had turned out the gas Dave
Darrin was soundly, blissfully asleep.

In another bed in the same room Dan Dalzell tossed
for fully half an hour ere sleep caught his eyelids
and pinned them down. In his slumber, however,
Dan dreamed that he was confronting the superintendent
of the Naval Academy and a group of officers, to whom
he was expounding the fact that he was right and they
were wrong. What the argument was about Dan didn’t
see clearly, in his dream, but he had the satisfaction
of making the superintendent and most of the Naval
officers with him feel like a lot of justly-rebuked
landsmen.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST DAY AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY

A few minutes before nine o’clock, the next
morning, Dave and Dan were strolling through Lover’s
Lane, not far from the administration building at
the United States Naval Academy.

Their instructions bade them report at 9.15.
Dan was for going in at once and “calling on”
the aide to the superintendent. But this Dave
vetoed, holding that the best thing for them to do
was to stick to the very letter of their orders.

So, as they waited, the young men got a glimpse of
the imposing piles of buildings that compose the newer
Naval Academy. Especially did handsome, big,
white Bancroft Hall enchain their admiration.
This structure is one of the noblest in the country.
In it are the midshipmen’s mess, the midshipmen’s
barracks for a thousand young men, numerous offices
and a huge recreation hall.

“That’s a swell hotel where they’re
going to put us up for four years, isn’t it?”
demanded Dan.

“I fancy that we’ll find it something
more—­or less—­than a hotel, before
we’re through it,” was Dave’s prophetic
reply.

As, at this time in the morning, all of the enrolled
midshipmen were away at one form or another of drill
or instruction, the central grounds were so empty
of human life that the onlooker could form no idea
of the immense, throbbing activity that was going
on here among the hundreds of midshipmen on duty.

“Here’s some of our kind,” spoke
Dan, at last, as he espied more than a dozen young
men, in citizen’s dress, strolling along under
the trees.